The Branson’s from Branson, Missouri to Pomeroy

          (this document is hereby made part of the public domain)

My grandfather was one of 9 Branson boys born and raised in what is now called Branson, Missouri.  One brother, Rueben Branson, was the postmaster in the area and when postal people in Kansas City would ask the chief about a letter, “he would say send that out to Branson” meaning to an isolated rural post office where the town still is a popular music fan destination.

You might imagine if there are 9 males in a small area, there will soon be a whole bunch of people with last name Branson.  Even in modern times, my sister had six boys and so the genes ride on into the future.

The overall topic of “Bransons from Branson” will be covered in another blog.  This blog is meant to cover just a few Branson’s who came from Pagosa Springs, Colorado to Pomeroy, Washington in 1909.

There were three children including Joe born in 1890 and my father.  He had two sisters Ada born in 1888 and Maggie born in 1892.  It is these latter two girls that primarily make up this story in regards to Pomeroy.  And it is Maggie who single handedly ushered my genes into the world by an act of kindness…hence…why I am writing this story.

 

 

Picture is in Colorado before trip to Pomeroy in 1909

Graduating from high school first of the three and marrying a logger dude named George Cummings in 1907, she was the initiating party to the Pomeroy Plan, but they didn’t know it.  I think George had this idea to get out of Pagosa Springs and go where there was more logging going on.  Maggie jumped on the wagon and wanted to go to get away from her mother, so in 1909 the three, possibly with some other Cummings folks, set out to find their fortunes in Western Montana.  They made their way to Pocatello Idaho area and then up to Missoula Montana.  There they heard about a series of projects in Eastern Washington, so they headed over Lolo Pass (like Lewis and Clark) down to Lewiston, Idaho and on 30 miles to Pomeroy.

Now looking at the modern Google Earth and USFS maps one might wonder how trees would be growing with wheat, but apparently at the time south of Pomeroy there were forests being logged off with some urgency.  There are more aspects to logging than just having trees to cut.  One needs a market and the steamboats provided a large market downriver.

This is a picture of George Cummings on the left demonstrating logging knowhow back in the 1910 era.  Modern day folks probably didn’t realize that a horse-drawn wagon could be loaded so heavily and without a crane.  Two thinner logs were leaned up against the wagon and one unhitched horse was used to roll the logs up the rams into their position on the trailer.  The logger needed to use judgement in fastening the cable to account for the angle the log would take due to one end being bigger than the other.  The steel wheeled wagon had worm drive brakes on the back wheels similar to those used as emergency brakes on railroad cars. The long tong helped stabilize the wagon on grades either up or down.  It was a very dangerous activity.

 

Heavier logs were usually put on the bottom layer and then the ramps raised atop those logs, etc until the top log was ramped up the steepest angle. The binder chain was used to pull the logs off with the horses.  The dog was the foreman.

The group  got to Pomeroy in time to be included in the 1910 census and Maggie shows up living with them.

1910 Census Pomeroy, Garfield County, Wa (actual census document on file)

George Walter Cummings…..20

Ada P. Branson Cummings….21

Margaret Charlotte Branson… 17

Maggie was a pretty girl at 17 when they landed, turning 18 shortly thereafter. Below is an image of Maggie thought to be her wedding picture on February 20, 1911.

 

Maggie wrote to my dad and her parents at Grimes Creek about some of their travels and how much she enjoyed it.  She thought Fred was a Prince Charming.

 

Fred and Maggie at Canadian Border not long after wedding

I am speculating her concerned look is the concern as to whether the wind-up setting and automatic picture feature is going to work at this momentous occasion. Fred doesn’t look too concerned. Note their clothes are quite expensive.

Maggie had played piano and sang in a Branson Band in the Pagosa Springs area for some time earlier.  Below is that last photo before Maggie, Ada and her husband George Cummings left to find better logging and wound up in Pomeroy, Wa.

 

From left to right, Joe Branson (banjon), Dave Branson(fiddle), Irene Branson(acoustic guitar) and Maggie Branson(piano).  In the back is a friend of the family Margaret Healy.

It was thought in the Branson Family that Maggie and Fred met when Maggie was playing piano and singing with her sister Ada at a hotel in Pomeroy.  Since Fred had not bought the farm land in Pomeroy until about 3 years later, it is surmised he was farming his mother’s land near Colfax, Washington (about 1200 acres).  Even years later when he had the land near Pomeroy, it is likely he was at least managing the Colfax property.  His mother died in 1915 and left her property to unborn children of Fred and Maggie, so it is nearly certain he was farming it thereafter. The pair likely lived at both places at times, particularly at harvest.

Much of Pomeroy had burned to the ground in 1900 so what was there in 1909 was largely new including a hotel and restaurant and probably a bar.  Maggie loved playing and singing but had no personal piano in Pomeroy.  By volunteer playing and singing in after hours, the manager made her an offer to play and sing at certain times if people liked it and tipped her, much like what happens today in “piano bars”.

Now, how many young men can avoid a pretty, young girl, singing and playing piano in a public arena?  To make this story shorter, Fred Hungate, already a prominent wheat farmer from Colfax perhaps looking to expand into the Pomeroy area made advances and finally was successful in getting her to marry him February 20, 1911.  He was 13 years older but apparently never married before and a pretty handsome dude by early pictures, probably high school graduation around 1897 below.

 

The marriage of Fred and Maggie was a made in heaven affair.  Fred already had a sizeable ranch to manage with the wheat farm operation in Colfax from his mother and Maggie probably only had limited household skills, so hired household help might be attractive.  But my dad always said, if a young girl is pretty enough, buy some household help.  So one thing Fred bought was a camera and Maggie loved to take pictures starting in 1911. Cameras were not all that friendly in 1912, but I guess she figured it out ok.  My apologies for the fuzzy pictures…it is all my fault….I scanned them on too low of resolution.  The idea is not to show their body parts, just the general idea of what was happening.

This is Maggie driving the Overland.  The Overland Company didn’t survive the 1929 crash but was fairly popular in 1915 and featured a powerful six cylinder engine option. This should tell the reader that Maggie was not the typical female of the day. The notation is by Maggie herself.

 

The picture below is a trip to Mexico/USA border with their Overland.  I don’t know if Fred had the bucks to ship it down the river on a steamer to someplace in California and drive on from there or drive all the way.  Big problem back then was fuel and knowledge of where the next fuel was going to be. By the quality of their clothes, they were not poor.

 

Fred had a ton of farm machinery and even though the horse drawn combine was invented in Europe in the late 1700s, it was sparsely locally constructed with the typical company going out of business soon after a few were built.  He continually had problems with replacement parts.  It was just a matter of time until Maggie convinced him to go visit her parents and her brother Joe now all living in Grimes Creek at the Golden Age Mine in Central Idaho a few dozen miles from Boise.

Likely Fred put this trip on a very low priority….but…you got to keep a pretty young girl happy.  The mine was located at 5200 feet elevation and the road mud didn’t clear until summer.  But that worked ok, because wheat doesn’t harvest until mid to late summer anyway. So they ventured south around June time frame.

Now Joe was a well-trained blacksmith.  In those days blacksmiths fixed anything and everything.  His primary responsibility at the Golden Age was to sharpen hand drill steel.  The miners really liked him because his steel stayed sharp longer and cut faster than they had previously.  This was because of skinny Joe’s experience as an apprentice in the program at Amethyst Mine in Colorado where his success yielded him a promised job at the Golden Age before he graduated from blacksmith school and that was the sole reason his dad, mom and he could venture west in 1910.

When Fed and Joe first met, Fred could see that Joe could make the very parts he needed and couldn’t buy.  He briefly described a part off some equipment and Joe said, “sure I can build it if you can draw it.”  So Fred got on the internet and contacted his foremen….hmmmm….perhaps not in 1912.  What he did do was go downstream to a lumber company narrow gauge railroad head and telegraph his foreman and got the info he needed to give to Joe.

According to Joe, perhaps an exaggeration to some bit, “I could build that blind-folded”. You have to remember, simple things like drilling holes was not an option.  The best way was to heat the piece up and punch out the hole while hot and soft.  I saw my dad do things like this in the 1950s when I worked with him in the Idaho Birthday Mine where he was the superintendent and part owner.

Fred was beside himself, according to Joe.  He tried to hire Joe to come to Pomeroy and live with his sister Maggie and Fred, because Joe was single then. But there was so much mining activity going on in Grimes Creek and Maggie and Joe’s father and mother Dave and Irene were operating a heavy hauling business where Dave could use his work horses to haul heavy pieces like 500 pound stamp mill plungers from the lumber company narrow gauge railroad downstream of Centerville to various mines as far away as Thunder Mountain (see Branson’s from Branson) The transplanted Branson’s were making really good money and soon saved enough to build their final cabin.

So you now have a very deep bond between Fred and Joe and they continued in this relationship thru some pretty difficult times nationally, including WWI and the Spanish Flu.

The pictures below are by Maggie of the horse drawn harvesting equipment. This collage of horse and metal are far more complex than one can imagine.  In the modern video referenced below one can get an idea of what is happening.

 

The reference below is of a 1938 version of a horse drawn combine. You can see the complete video on YouTube by searching “horse drawn combine”.

 

The image below shows a 5 man crew counting the driver out of the picture.  The cutting reel was about 20 feet long and cut the entire wheat stalk and then separated the grain which the top left two people filled bags and then dumped as a group of four to be picked up by another crew later.

 

The image below appears to be of a Holt 75, or something similar, used in WW I to haul heavy loads like cannons thru mud and steep terrain.  Quite a few were built prior to WW I and continued into the 1920s.  In 1922 Fred deeded over the Pomeroy property to Maggie perhaps likely to make him qualify to buy a surplus Holt 75 at a cheaper price. It is not likely Maggie had any idea to the depth of the plan.

 

Below is the clearer image of the Holt 75.  There were a ton of these made for the military and it is quite likely Fred was able to buy it as a war surplus model to test drive on his ranch.

 

The reader can tell from the video on horse drawn combines that getting the horses to run precisely where they should was definitely not often successful.  They were lucky if the horses ran within feet of the optimum point.  Now days we have gps controlled machines that operate within inches of the optimum.

Fred had told my dad, who hated jug heads (horses) that he only had to keep about 14 horses to take the outer sides and front.  Untrained horses were put inside and the rigging hit them in the ass if they slacked off.  His star performers are shown below.

So where is the optimum?

The price per bushel in 1920 era may have been around $5 and the productivity at that time per acre maybe around 20 bushel per acre, then a typical harvest for 960 acres with 800 acres of productive land would be about  $80,000 per year gross.  It was quite important that the horses didn’t run out into the wheat and destroy a major chunk of it and likewise important that they didn’t leave a strip between the old cut and the new cut that would go unharvested. In the WSC 1938 video they appear to be moving at barely over a walk speed.  It was amazing they could make the sharp turn that they make.

Fred related to my dad that the horses ate all year; had diseases year around; fought year around; and needed daily attention.  The harvest lasted about 2 weeks.  Of course, one ranch shared the harvesting equipment, but since the general area all became ready for harvest within a few weeks of each other, the equipment could not be spread over more than two or three ranches.  So a lot of ranches remained in “slow mode” using much smaller equipment and much slower harvesting time and consequently more losses to overripe wheat.

The image below shows the old method of harvesting.  The wheat was cut with smaller two horse sickles, then raked to a strip like alfalfa  and then picked up to a hay wagon.  There was not an option to pack as dense as a hay bale because the wheat grains would fall on the ground.  So the cut wheat was pitch forked onto a wagon and then pitch forked into the large stacks below….all in an effort to preserve the grain from separation too soon.  Getting the steam engine setup and coal delivered was a big job.

A major problem the reader should keep in mind is that all the farms came in need of harvest about the same time.  So there was tremendous demand, as there still is today but with much different equipment , all at one time and then you are done for another year.  When I was going to the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho in the early 1960s, these problems still existed.  I was going to work as a lintel truck driver but found out it only lasted a few weeks.

Fred, always being the forward looking businessman and farm leader in Pomeroy, was looking for some way to harvest quickly as possible and not pay thru the nose for annual horse care.  The track tractor provided much better steering control and could harvest far more precisely and faster so more ranchers could share in the cost of the tractor. Fred got that Holt 75 dirt cheap and by pulling much wider cutters, operating much more precisely moved the productivity of the ranch up at least 50%.  Fifty percent of $80,000 was noticeable even in those days. J

The secondary problem with wheat farming is that the angle of the land to the sun makes a big difference as to how soon the wheat ripens.  The proficient rancher knows he has to wait enough to make sure the bulk of the wheat is ripened enough.  But the wheat that is on the slope facing the sun ripens much faster and ripened wheat is easily damaged so that it mostly falls to the ground when cut instead of inside the thrasher.

My dad says Fred often vented his frustration to him because he deeply respected Joe’s ability to fix things and I guess was hoping for some bright idea.  My dad’s answer as a blacksmith was quite simple….”get rid of the jug heads”….that would be horses.  If the rancher is totally in control of harvest, he simply harvests the sloped areas first for all associate ranches and then flatter areas last.  Fred was aghast at the simplicity. After he got his Holt 75, they simply harvested the sloped areas first and then cycled thru the flat areas.  And most importantly, the Holt had an electrical system with lights so it could be operated at night…..a huge advantage to service more farms.

Even though the ranch at Colfax was still at near the elevation of the Pomeroy ranch, because it was closer to the mountains it received more snow and was ready for harvest a couple weeks later. So Fred could use the same equipment on both ranches.  A big advantage to the bottom line.

Aero-Fred

There are a ton of things Fred did that were Henry Ford thinking but perhaps boring to the modern reader.  Here now is an example of Fred’s perhaps extravagance turned profitable, maybe.

It looks like Fred took out a loan on the Pomeroy property for about $25k and part of what he bought was a surplus airplane.  The historicpomeroy.com website shows where Fred was going to a demo in Walla Walla and because of car trouble didn’t make it on time.  He had passed the military requirement for an examination.  He expressed how he was very disappointed because the airplane looked so simple to fly. Now honey, I am a modern day pilot of a Cessna 182 and piloting is still not simple. It mostly is a weather issue which was far less defined in the1920s.

Fred was able to fly over his wheat ranch and see that the crop varied substantially in color when approaching the ripened harvest stage.  He was able to map this enough in his mind (800+ productive acres) that gave him a strategy for harvesting.  Not only had the sun but soil conditions made a difference as to where to sample for ripened wheat. 

So here is Fred and his Jenny.  The Jenny were used to train pilots in WW I extensively and again hundreds in surplus that could be picked up for dime on the dollar. The instructor pilot rode in the back and the trainee in the front. I am a pilot of small fixed wing crafts and I know that you can get the basic idea of flying in this manner.  However, things like weather conditions and visual flight restrictions are totally another matter. There were not instrument flight options in the 1920s.

Below is one of the more clear images from Maggie.  There is another image showing the same plane not shown, Fred and what appears to be Maggie.  Wow!  If he talked her into flying with him??.....bet it didn’t happen often. The 75 mph wind, always cold, noise you couldn’t believe….scared shitless most of the time….naw…it didn’t happen much.

 

That strut just to the left of Fred’s foot got bent on a rough landing and Fred telegraphed Joe for advice.  Fred said the local blacksmith wanted to heat it up and straighten it out.  Joe advised him to go to the nearest mine and have them use what is called a “JimCrow” (no relation) that they use to make curves in mine rails to straighten it out cold and not risk some weakening of the temper by heating.

Look at the propeller on that plane.  A big chunk of wood carefully hand shaven to who knows what specification, but all you could get back then. That cover plate just to the right of Fred’s ear cracked and Joe made him a new one at some time.  Fred was always so thankful that he could get replacement parts somewhere reliable anywhere as the supply chain in those days was brutal.

In the historicpomeroy.com website there is mention of Fred trying to get the commissioners to build an airport so he could fly between Pomeroy and Colfax where his parent’s property was.  I guess it never happened because the metropolis of Pomeroy still doesn’t have an airport. I guess having an airport in Lewiston was good enough for them.

My dad always referred to horses as “jug heads” because as a blacksmith he had to shoe them and they didn’t always want to be shoed.  In modern times, they haven’t improved any.  My dad always thought Fred was the Henry Ford of Wheat Farming. He certainly was in the Pomeroy area.

Fred’s dad had moved from Walla Walla where he arrived in the mid-1800s up to Colfax area where I had great familiarity in the 1960s while attending the U.of Idaho .  The key thing about the “Palouse” is the many ups and down which cause the horses severe anxiety from a heavy pull to being run over by the equipment down the other side. It seems likely that Fred saw the advantage in the Pomeroy area where there is not nearly so many small ridges and valleys.  It is not clear whether wheat farming was all that popular in 1911 before Fred.

Here Comes Jim, Part 1

In 1920 Fred and Maggie had their first child after 9 years of traveling and total happiness as a pair.  The daughter’s name was Hilda and she grew up to be a beautiful young lady and we have multiple pictures of her in a group settings but as her graduation picture from nursing school, the best clarity shows thru.

One can see the contribution of Fred to her looks.

Even before there was legal proof, the location of the ranch was found on Google Earth from pictures supplied by Maggie.  It wasn’t easy and the most unlikely picture provided the fit.  Below one can see how the winter scene highlighted the ridges and made it easier to fit to the Google Image. Perhaps some readers can use this technique to find locations from scant old photos.

Later there are legal documents that describe the property in Section, township and range which detail the location in gps terms. Recent Google Image of the area described by the foreclosure with the Federal Land Bank of Spokane in 1931.

As it turns out, Fred was financially deeply wounded by the 1929 market crash.  He had barrowed a paltry sum of $25k against the property and had plenty of stocks and bonds to cover it.  But when the banks failed in 1929, he was left holding the bag with no access to his money to pay off the small loan even though he was a director in the bank. 

To make matters seriously much worse, they had their second child named Margaret Irene Hungate, named Irene after Maggie’s mother’s name of Irene.  So they had to retreat to their mother’s place in Colfax in 1930.

This is how they met my future mother, Pauline Williams of Oklahoma.  Her parents had been killed together in I believe a car accident and she was adopted by her uncle, John Williams in Pullman, Washington, president of a bank in Pullman. Perhaps both Fred and Maggie loved the silent movies and often came to Pullman to see the latest.

My mother explained to me many years later that the accompaniment to the movie provided wide flexibility to the pianist, primarily emphasizing the building of excitement for the scenes.  When I was about 6 sitting under her grand piano listening to her and watching her short legs stomp the pedals, she voiced the written movie while playing the score decades beyond the initial playing.  She would say, “Here comes the bad guy to whack the good guy…sneaking around….bashing him on the head.”  It seems like I was actually watching the movie. It didn’t take much to entertain a six year old in the late 1940s.

Apparently with Maggie’s relative mediocre piano skills, a deep friendship developed between Maggie and Pauline around the 1935 to 1936 era. At the time, Maggie was already becoming aware that Margaret Irene (born 1929) had some type of problem with seizures and was often mentally adrift in the concern. My mother told me decades later that she was totally consumed by Maggie’s problem and it seemed natural for her and Maggie to drift off in musical chatter. It looks like my mother felt sorry for Maggie and Maggie felt sorry for my mother that she was 30+ and had not had a meaningful relationship with a male.

Of course one has to take into consideration the facts at hand.  My mother was raised by her banker uncle who provided her with her own governess who did everything for her and Pauline could simply concentrate on playing the piano and after all, she was damn good at it.  I doubt Pauline could make a peanut butter sandwich.  Of course, we all know, movies were destined to have sound tracks and playing for movies came to a sudden end.

Fortunately, my mother never knew that silent movies died.  Somehow Maggie and Pauline agreed to a trip south from Pullman to Lowman, Idaho where Maggie’s brother Joe (my dad) was the superintendent of a producing gold mine and single at the time.

Fortunate no. 2 was that Pauline had a nearly new Model T Ford and Maggie had automobile skills including patching flat tires.  Most people, and Pauline did too, carried spare tires, but often you had another flat before the spare got you thru to a station perhaps a 100 miles away.  At any rate, they made it 350 miles on really rough roads from Pullman to Lowman including the 20 miles on now Hiway 17 that was two parallel trails from Garden Valley to Lowman area that I experienced repeatedly as a child.  In one place it is 1600 vertical feet from the narrow road to river far below.  There was a road grader that graded the road once a year whether it needed it or not. The suspension system on cars of that era was nothing to write home about.

As my mother related the story to me, it was near my dad’s birthday and so Maggie decided to bake him a birthday cake.  That is fine.  But she decided to place a small token in the cake and then announce whoever got the token in their piece of cake, got Pauline!!!!  As my mother related, Maggie knew where the token was and made sure her brother Joe got it in his piece.  My mother never said whether the deal was instantaneous or delayed thru a dating process, hard to believe that could happen so quickly.  At any rate, they got married shortly thereafter. My older brother was born just a little over a year later in June of 1937.

My First Ending to this Story

At the first writing, I decided to end the story here because I had achieved the revelation as to how I came into existence.  And the next portion of Maggie’s life was thought to be too horrible to tell.  But after reading the divorce decree over and over, I decided the divorce was more an act of love than anything else.

As time went on from 1936, Margaret Irene born in 1929 started having more regular seizures and the local schools refused to let her attend.  It isn’t so much the danger of the seizure, but what secondary events like choking that can happen as well.

Maggie was the design plaintiff and filed the divorce.  In the rebuttal by Fred’s lawyer, a very telling word appears.  He referred to the seizure as an “affliction” which is typically associated with witchcraft.  It is clear Fred’s reaction to the seizures was more of detriment to Fred and Maggie than the seizure itself.  If you are not familiar with an epileptic seizure you can view young women having them at the site below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac4DQqij3Bg

Most people cannot watch but a few seconds even though there are no blood and guts.  It is just very hard to watch somebody you deeply love going thru a seizure.

In the plaintiff decree, Maggie listed the usual things like intoxication; reckless endangerment driving (Maggie broke her collar bone in a rollover caused by Fred) and mental abusive language (too make it simple).  Fred hardly disagreed in his rebuttal. While disagreeing on the amount Fred needed to pay, I was first taken back when Maggie was awarded $50 per month and another $25 per month for care of Margaret Irene.  However, remembering my dad was paying top miners $3 per day that figured to about $700 per year, or $58 per month.

The much bigger problem was how little was known about epilepsy in 1940 when the divorce was ruled upon.  There was a professor at WSC that provided the most help to Maggie and made her aware of a special facility in Los Angeles County where help might be available on a 24 hour basis and the parent could work there and reduce the costs.  The seizures were apt to strike any time of day and serious problems could develop, particularly if the patient tried to walk around.

Because there were numerous photos of Fred and Hilda appearing with Maggie’s sister and in-laws after the divorce, it finally occurred to me that the divorce was kept secret and Fred just related that Maggie had taken Margaret Irene to a special hospital for treatment in California with no details.  In fact it appeared that Fred finally realized that Margaret Irene could not receive any treatment in Colfax and Fred couldn’t leave Colfax and Maggie was not willing to simply give up on the situation. Fred was 61 in 1940 and probably had many friends around and Hilda was there at least until she finished nursing school.

In the 1941 picture below showing Maggie, her sister Ada who had remarried a man named Kimball and their mother Irene, it is clear Maggie has a lot on her mind.  It is likely Ada via her new husband was paying for a trip back to Colorado to visit their old home and friends.  But Maggie (center) does not look anything like her previous pictures.  Her clothes are very plain relative to Irene and Ada.

 

In fact we do not have many pictures later than this one.  She either couldn’t afford them or else it was too painful to look at her daughter.

Sometime after this trip Maggie and Margaret Irene went to California, more or less totally 

alone.  Maggie had written to the facility director and they were assured of at least a preliminary admission. There now would be a gap in our knowledge of what happened.

As fortune would have it, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor later in 1941 and the USA government announced that all gold mining operations would need to shut down so that if the Japanese gained a foothold in the US, they would not find operating gold mines.  My dad came home drunk in January and in spite of being told it wasn’t good timing,  he forged ahead….and wahlah….Jim was created in early 1942 to be born in October of that same year.

To shorten this part of the story, dad found a small job tending a hydro-electric plant on Grimes Creek 3 miles above his mother’s place and started a tunnel towards a silver vein.  Nothing panned out and WW I continued in the spring of 1943.  On his 6 volt huge Zenith radio he had heard advertisements for hydraulic specialist training in Spokane at the Mission Street Community College, still in business today.  Once signed up for the training, one was guaranteed a good paying job in…..guess where….Long Beach, California.

It wasn’t long before Ada had connected Maggie and Joe via letters and they made contact.  This is how I began my personal relationship with Maggie.  Maggie not only had her brother, but Pauline, my mother, was a dear friend too.  It was a very big mental improvement for Maggie.

My dad had found a made-in-Heaven job for himself.  Because of his slight, slim size and blacksmith toughness, he could repair the nose wheel cavity hydraulics on some fighter planes that nobody else on the facility could access. He quickly was promoted to foreman but still had to do some planes himself.

Fast forward to late 1945, Margaret Irene passed away due to some secondary event not directly due to the seizure.  It was probably a god-send to all the living adults and even Maggie was willing to let her go, she told me much later.

The trip from California back to Idaho or Washington was tough, even in non-winter conditions.  And to everyone’s delight, the war ended in August 1945.  But Joe had two kids in school and decided to wait until spring 1946 to return to Grimes Creek.  Maggie decided to wait and travel with him.  She wanted to see her mother Irene at Grimes Creek and have time to visit with all their friends in the area.

As it turned out, Ozell (daughter of sister Ada) and her husband Bill Newel had scheduled to come down from Spokane and help usher Maggie back to the Pullman-Colfax Area on their return to Spokane.

Even though I was only 3 years old in October 1945, Maggie and I developed a good relationship which I still remember.  She was impressed that I would spontaneously stand at attention, face the music on the radio and salute when the Star Spangled Banner played.  We went to get ice cream and play in the ocean together and I road in her car part of the time coming back to Grimes Creek in 1946.

 

This picture is taken by Maggie in 1946 when we took a day trip from Grimes Creek over to Lowman where the mine cabins were located, there in the background. That handsome blond dude in the middle is ….guess who. Dad wanted to check on things and show Bill around.

In 1947 Irene Branson, mother of the three, died in June 1947 and later in September Maggie remarried a man named Alexander.  There are no pictures of that era.

My next encounter with Maggie was in the summer of 1965.  She had come to Inglewood, California to help with the care of her older sister Ada who had moved down to be with her daughter Ozell.  It is not clear how long she had been down there but Maggie wrote to my dad that Ada was on her last days if he wanted to come down.  Since he was 75 years old and not an attentive driver, coming down 1000 miles to California was out of the question.  But he told her his son Jim was working at the Shell Chemical Plant in Torrance, remember our relationship.

So Maggie and Ozell called the plant and found out where and when they could meet with me.  Unbeknown to me I was well known by the guards.  Apparently I was “that crazy engineer from Idaho that came to work an hour early in his shirt sleeves when it was 40 degrees outside”.  My wife and I only had one car and both worked, so she dropped me off early to go on to her work.

When Maggie and Ozell came, the guards went on the speaker system which broadcast all over the 1000 acre plant site, “Mr. Branson….Mr. Branson…please come to the Styrene Gate where there are two lovely young ladies waiting for you”.  I didn’t even hear it but it appears everybody else in the plant knew about it and an officemate came to tell me to pack up and head for the gate.

When I approached the guardhouse, I could see George Harrington who had hired me.  I remember he had taken me to lunch with two other people during my interview in 1964 and it was a bowling alley and I thought I had bombed the interview.  Two men went in ahead of me, I held the door for the last guy who was sort of hanging back.  When he took the door, I turned around and was “nose to nipple” of a topless, near naked beautiful young girl. My response was easy, “Holy shit”.  I then knew why they took me there….it was so they could see the topless girls. The whole bar erupted in laughter.

My wife showed up shortly at the gate and we accepted an invitation to Ozell’s house to have dinner and talk over old times. Neither my wife nor I was much of a socializer or had the gracefulness one might want in older age. I of course didn’t know anything about Margaret Irene or remember that much about the 1946 trip back to Grimes Creek.

So here comes the funny part.  Bill was apparently some type of draftsman designer and was interested in everything I was doing at Shell.  Maggie and my wife had a similar frisky personality, so they hit it off, along with nurse Ozell interest in Ruth’s physical therapist training.  So we are all locked up in our conversations.  I noticed Ozell looking at her husband Bill, like wives are keen to do.  Suddenly he says, “I think it is time for some more drinks.  Ozell and Ruth can come with me and help provide the right mixing procedures”.  The three of them abruptly left and I turned to Maggie.  She had tears in her eyes.

I thought perhaps she way crying because her sister was dying and I said, “I am really sorry to hear about Ada.  I know you two and my dad was very close.”

She said, “That isn’t the cause of the tears”.  She went on to explain how she had written my dad about Ada and he revealed to her how sad he was that I was so far away and given his age, he might not ever see me again. She wanted to know why I had chosen a job so far away.

Part of the reason I locked up the job clear back 5 months before graduation is that my wife Ruth had taken 3 years of Physical Therapy at the U. of Colorado and needed to attend a medical school for the last year.  She thought the one at UCLA was right for her but didn’t write ahead of time.  Within the first month in LA she found out many of her credits at U.of Colorado would not be accepted and that it would take two years to finish up and by then she was already full of LA up to her ears.

So I lean over to Maggie and said, “You can write your brother that he will see me in months, not years”.  She busted out crying and got up and came over to give me a big kiss.  When I went to kiss her, she was smiling ear to ear and all I had was teeth to kiss.

About then my wife comes in and says, “Jesus Jim…she’s your aunt, not your girlfriend!!!”.  Apparently my hands had got a little low on her backside.  All the room was filled with laughter. 

We departed shortly thereafter.  My wife saying she knew the way home but she was a little too tipsy to be driving and fell asleep before I got out of the driveway.  Bill had already told me I could drive down his street towards the ocean and it would run into Hiway 101 which I knew went right by my apartment.

We did return to my dad’s place at Lowman that spring of 1966 and then onto Spokane to work for Kaiser Aluminum.  I did visit my dad at least one time per year until his last stroke.

I never heard what happened to Maggie until I started researching this paper.  Fred had died in 1954 and the Colfax property went to Hilda.  Apparently Hilda married somebody named King.  Maggi e died in 1973 in Orangevale, California and apparently Hilda lived there at the time. There still is a Hilda C. King (marked 80+) living in Placerville, about 25 miles from Orangeville.  If that is her, she is near 100 years old.

Now you know what happened to at least one Pomeroy family in the 1900s.

Jim Branson

Retired Professional Engineering Manager

Knowhow at ctcweb dot net

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